I'll start with the caveat: I don't own the Book of Battle, so some of this may have been adjusted more to my liking in that book. My criticism is mainly with regards to the main book and especially the battles in GPC, which I feel is seriously out of synch with the way Glory is rewarded in individual skirmishes/duels nowadays.

Now, don't get me wrong. I can understand, generally, why you'd get loads of glory from big battles: more witnesses, more talked about ("I was at Agincourt with King Harry!") and potentially more fighting than you'd see in a skirmish/duel. The first two have nothing to do with fighting as such, while the third one is really about fighting... But the 'problem' is, that battles are way way more safe than skirmishes are.

Effectively, each battle round is the same as a combat round: you roll the dice and if the enemy rolls better, you get hit. The problem is, in a battle, especially a huge victorious one like the Battle of Lindsey, you get loads of glory even if you failed the roll. In a normal skirmish/duel, you'd get nothing, and in order to get the Glory, you actually need to defeat your opponent which may entail several combat rounds of rolling, especially if they are moderately well armored, like an enemy knight.

Lets imagine two situations, where
A) the PK is facing off against some Saxons with skill 15, dealing with the one after another.
B) the PK is in a huge victorious battle where the opponents are mainly Saxons with a skill 15.

Lets assume that you need two successes kills a Saxon in A (that seems to be the case when a knight faces off against a Saxon with a shield), and each failure means that the PK gets lightly wounded. Lets make the fight/battle last 8 rounds and assume that the PK succeeds in hitting the Saxons half the time and vice versa.

End result:
A) PK has managed to succeed four times and killed two Saxons, in return of taking 4 light wounds. He gains 15+15 = 30 Glory.
B) PK has succeeded four times and failed four times, taking 4 light wounds. This accounts him 6*45*2 = 540 glory, almost 20 (!!!) times the skirmish did, despite running the same risks.

But wait, did he run the same risks? No, he didn't.

In A), the PK gets the same Glory (or maybe even less, I don't have 5.1, so I am not sure if the Glory is gained from the effective skill or the true one) even if he is mounted vs. a footman (Saxon's skill lowers to 10, so he likely kills three instead of two, but if the Glory is counted from effective skill, 3*10 = 30). In Battle B), the starting assumption usually is a Mounted vs. Footman especially against Saxons. I didn't take this into account, so by adjusting for it, the knight in B would likely win more rounds, lets say 6, and gets additional 90 points of glory for a total of 630 vs. 45 (?) for the other one. Only 14 times as much this time around.

In addition, if the PK gets knocked off his horse in A), he is likely to get hacked by a Saxon while he is still struggling up, a big benefit for the Saxon. Whereas in Battle B), getting unhorsed just means you will start the next round on foot, and have a chance, a reasonable one if you have high Battle, to walk to the back of the battle or find a new horse.

Disengaging tends to be much easier in Battle than it is in a skirmish. Granted, being on horseback helps a lot in either case, and a knight on foot is toast if he tries to run away from Saxons, more often than not. But in Battle, you can disengage without risk if you succeed in your Battle, which you are likely to do. Advantage: Battle.

And perhaps the biggest 'culprit': in a skirmish, it is rather easy for a PK to be outnumbered by Saxons, especially if he fell from his horse. Tending to make a bad situation worse. Granted, the GM might give a bonus to your Glory if you manage to take on 5 Saxons alone, but at that point, you are just happy to survive...

You usually gain good loot from Battles, especially victorious ones. Granted, you might gain some loot from defeated Saxons, too, especially if they had any thegns or chieftains amongst them.

In short, skirmishing is way more dangerous than being in a Battle, and you get way way way more Glory from Battles in comparison. So much so that it is a bit silly, IMHO. Lost Battles are not that bad, as the victory modifier flips to 0.5, and hence, you 'only' gain about 4-5 times as much Glory as in a skirmish for the lesser risk.

I don't mind Battles being more Glorious than skirmishing. But at the moment, in GPC, they are WAY too easy to gain loads of Glory from in comparison to the risks. And here is the kicker. If you include even one 'Extended Melee' in the Battle, that one round is suddenly as deadly or more so than the rest of the Battle put together. But even if it is 'capture King Octa', you are still likely to get more Glory from the rest of the Battle itself.

'Solutions':
1) Make each battle round an Extended Melee. You get the glory you kill times a modest modifier depending on the size of the battle and (maybe) whether it was a victory or not. This takes time to play through, though. And might make Battles too deadly (or not, as they could always disengage afterwards and get some First Aid the next round, before charging back into the fray if they feel up to it).
2) Lower the Glory amount you get from Battles by a lot. Unless there is an extended melee where you accomplish something major, you shouldn't gain much more than 100 Glory for being in a battle.

Alright, rant over. :)

Do Battles give out too much Glory? In my opinion, absolutely.

But this can be seen as a game mechanic that emulates the chilvalric love for fighting and encourages the player to work within the ethos of the feudal system by giving his knight a few hundred very good reasons to answer his liege's call.

There has been very few battles in the our campaign after Arthur had defeated the rebel kings, so I it has not been a huge factor for us, unlike the absurdly high yearly "idle" glory.

I don't mind battles giving more glory than an equivalent skirmish, but I have a problem with how much more it is, a huge 10+ multiplier in bigger battles.

Yes, it depends at what stage you are playing. The two decades from 510 to 530 are just insane in Battle Glory.

Again, it is not a game-breaking problem, as the GM has tight rein on what battles the PKs get to participate in and those big battles do not happen all that often. And really, it doesn't make THAT much of a difference if the PKs have a couple of thousand more glory than they otherwise would, from participating in a couple of battles. (Although that kind of 'Glory inflation' does mean that I'd like to see the NPCs with 2000+ Glory, too, with 1000 - 2000 Glory range reserved for the newbies who have not seen a real battle.)

"Idle" Glory:
I agree with you here, but I think Greg has taken steps to curtail this with the current set of rules, with no Trait/Passion annual glory. And he was going to make Chivalric much harder to attain, too. So that pretty much leaves landholdings (usually less than 20), conspicious consumption (usually less than 20 too), and I think that is about it?

The more I think about it, the more I am starting to veer towards:

1. Give Glory based on the enemy during each Battle Round, if the PK wins.
2. Give Event Glory based on the battle size and outcome, to reflect how much the battle itself would be talked about.

So a knight fighting five rounds successfully against enemy with a skill of 15 during a large, victorious battle, would get 75+90 = 165 Glory. Good enough reason, with plunder, to obey the summons to war. Especially as if the knight doesn't do that, he loses his lands. That 165 Glory in this case would still be around 4 times as much glory as he would have gotten in a skirmish, assuming two success / kill, but I think I can live with that. :P

I would encourage people to play through the whole campaign before changing rules.
It appears arbitrary, but is not.
Here is why:

As noted, the huge battles are primarily at the start of the game.
Few occur later.
The accumulation of massive Glory by the first generation of knights, and the subsequent inability of generations to do the same; is a deliberate action.
By the time of the third generation the player knights will be facing a frustration at their inability to be like their grandfathers.
This very much warps the players' actions in an attempt to up the Glory.
It makes things like Mordred's blood tournaments quite appealing.
It brings about the fracturing of intention, the crumbling of a unified way to accomplish desires.
Player knights, and/or their families, join different factions according to their desires.
It is a critical part of the Round Table story.
It is a deliberate plan.
It works, too.

I have a vague recollection that I have heard you say that before, Greg.

In Campaign A, we are now in 551, so we are pretty far along. And yes, I have noticed the players 'missing' those big high glory battles of the previous generations. Not to the extent that your players apparently do, but that might have something to do with the pacing of our campaign, which tends to give the players still a pretty decent amount of glory per year. Hence, they are not as 'starved' for Glory. Also, in this campaign, Mordred is still a pretty decent bloke, at least on the surface. :P What did get the players to 'rebel' was the introduction of the Elegant Tournament, the exclusion of knights not suitably well-versed in the minutiae of the rules, and the abolishment of the Melee. That caused a lot of griping, so maybe that might make them more amenable for the 'good old days' type of mock battles. :P